Andrew Hargadon is a professor of management and director of technology management programs at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. He is also founding director of the UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship and UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center. He was recently named the first recipient of the Charles J. Soderquist Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship.

Before arriving at UC Davis in August 2001, he was an assistant professor at the Warrington College of Business Administration at the University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. in organizational behavior from Stanford University’s Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management in 1998. He has also worked as a product designer at IDEO and Apple Computer, and he has taught in the product design program at Stanford University.

Professor Hargadon’s research interests include understanding how innovation happens by mapping the evolution of new ideas from their sources. He is interested in how great inventors utilize “knowledge brokering,” a practice of borrowing old ideas and thought processes from a diverse body of both academic and applied knowledge. Professor Hargadon found that inventors who engaged in knowledge brokering were successful at fomenting technological revolutions. He also studies how to effectively manage innovation and writes extensively on the role of learning and knowledge management in innovation.

Much of Professor Hargadon’s research findings have been used to develop and guide new innovation programs in organizations such as the Canadian Health Services, many Silicon Valley start-ups, Hewlett-Packard and the U.S. Navy. He has published numerous articles and chapters in leading scholarly and applied publications, including Harvard Business Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, California Management Review and Research in Organizational Behavior. Professor Hargadon serves on the editorial board of Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Organization Studies and the Academy of Management Review.

He teaches entrepreneurship academies for scientist and engineers, corporate executive programs and lectures on creativity, design and the management of innovation. Professor Hargadon is the author of How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate (Harvard Business School Press, 2003)